Barbara Ladd Part 5

Barbara clapped her hands.

"Oh!" she cried, "How can I ever thank you for being so lovely to me?

But I knew you were nice the moment I looked at you!" And a load rolled off her mind. With such a helper, already was her enterprise accomplished.

"I will try hard to be worthy of your favour," said Robert, with deep gravity, feeling that now indeed was boyhood put away and full manhood descended upon his shoulders. His brain was racked with the terrific problem of finding Barbara fit lodging for the night; but meantime he turned the canoe and paddled swiftly out into the current. Hardly had he changed his course when he noticed a light rowboat creeping up along the sh.o.r.e. But boats were no unusual sight on the river, and he paid no heed to it. As for Barbara, she was so absorbed in watching his great strokes, and in thinking how delightful it was to have found such an ally, that the sound of the oars pa.s.sed her ears unheeded, and she did not turn her head.

CHAPTER IX.

At length, however, the boy noticed with a tinge of surprise that the boat was steering as if to intercept his course. He was about to pa.s.s greeting to its occupants when something in the face of the big man sitting in the stern arrested his words. At the same moment the sound of the oars caught Barbara's attention, and she turned her head.

"Oh!" she cried, shrilly. "Doctor Jim!--and Doctor John!" she added, as one of the two rowers looked around and grinned at her in humourous triumph. Then, her visions of life at Stratford with Uncle Bob falling to ruin about her, she wept aloud in her disappointment.

Robert understood, and quick as thought swerved in his course, making a dart for the swifter water of mid-channel. His heart swelled with exultation.

"They can't catch us!" he declared to Barbara.

"Stop! you young rascal!" thundered the mighty voice of Doctor Jim. "I know you, Bobby Gault. Don't I know your father's son? Stop this instant!"

"Quit this tomfoolery, Bobby!" roared Doctor John, albeit a little breathless from his labour. Barbara lifted her face and stared through her tears. But the boy paid no heed, paddling mightily, and the distance between boat and canoe was surely widening.

But Doctor Jim knew Barbara.

"Very well!" he said, grimly, in a loud voice. "I'm sorry to do bodily hurt to the son of my old friend Richard, but it can't be helped."

He drew a long-barrelled pistol from under the flap of his green coat.

"I'll have to wing you, my boy!" he said, taking careful aim, while one eyelid quivered in the direction of Doctor John.

The boy's face paled a little, but his jaw set firmly, and he kept right on.

"Stop! stop! stop!" screamed Barbara, but with no result. She half arose in the canoe, glancing with horror from the boy's resolute face to the muzzle of the pistol.

"If you don't stop, Robert, I will throw myself overboard this minute!"

she vowed.

The terror in her face convinced him. He sullenly drew in his paddle, laid it down in the canoe, folded his arms, and looked off over the western hills, as if scornful of all that might take place.

In a few seconds the boat came up alongside of the drifting canoe, the oars were drawn in, and strong hands laid hold upon the gunwale. There were some awful moments of silence, broken only by Barbara's sobbing and the splas.h.i.+ng of waves on the boat and the canoe. The owner of the boat, a gaunt farmer from Westings Landing, a few miles down the river, who had not been initiated into the mystery, looked on in discreet astonishment. This was indeed a strange situation in which to see the grandson of Lady Gault. At last Barbara, to whom suspense was hideous, broke out.

"Oh, do say something!" she wailed. Indeed, neither Doctor John nor Doctor Jim knew just what to say. They were embarra.s.sed. But the child was right. Somebody had to say something. By interchange of quick glances the lot fell to Doctor John.

"Well, this is pretty gallivanting, running away with a young man,--carrying him off in your aunt's canoe!" said Doctor John.

Barbara's eyes opened very wide.

"I never!" she cried, indignantly.

"As for you, Bobby Gault," interposed Doctor Jim, severely, and in a tone that made Robert feel himself hatefully young, "I cannot comprehend how _you_ should come to be mixed up in this affair. I know well what my friend, Richard Gault, your lamented father, with his nice notions of honour, would have thought of such an escapade." (Robert's father and mother had died within a few days of each other, by an epidemic of typhus, when the boy was only five years old.) "But I shall lay the matter before your good grandmother, and your uncle, who will doubtless deal with you as you deserve."

Robert shut his lips tight and eyed the speaker proudly; but Barbara made reply in her vehement way.

"It is not Robert's fault at all, I tell you, Doctor Jim!" she cried, forgetting that she had said nothing whatever on the subject. "I just met him, an hour or two ago, on an old raft; and he knew who I was; and because he was getting his feet wet on the raft, I invited him to get into the canoe; and I made him promise to paddle me just wherever I wanted to go. So there! And it is not his fault one bit! And you may do what you like to me, but I won't have him punished when he has not done anything at all!"

Doctor John tried to look quite grave; and Doctor Jim, who was really annoyed, succeeded.

"Oh, ho! young man!" he remarked, sarcastically, "it appears that you have a champion. Now, what have you to say for yourself?"

"Mistress Barbara has neglected to add," said he, with all the dignity that he could a.s.sume, "that I insisted upon her narrating to me all the unhappy circ.u.mstances of her life in Second Westings. The story commanded my fullest sympathy, and I had just given her my word that I would aid her in escaping to her uncle, Mr. Glenowen, where she would be happy, when you came and violently interfered with her purpose. I ask you, sir, to consider. Are you not ashamed to be instrumental in restoring a young lady to conditions where she has been made to suffer so cruelly?"

In spite of his indignation, Robert could not help feeling proud of this effort. In his own ears it sounded imposing, unanswerable, and altogether grown up. Barbara thought it was a miracle of eloquence, and cast him a grateful look. But Doctor John could not conceal his delight in the stilted periods. He burst into a huge guffaw, at which Barbara's eyes snapped and Robert's dark skin reddened angrily. But Doctor Jim exclaimed, hotly:

"Hoity-toity! How big we do feel! To think how often I dandled you on my knee when you were a mewling baby. If I had but known enough to spank you once in awhile, you might not have grown up to be such a priggish young c.o.xcomb. Richard's son! Who would have thought it?

Eh, what?"

Meanwhile the boat and canoe were drifting rapidly down-stream. Doctor John looked at the sun, now touching the horizon.

"Don't you think, Master Gault," said he, drily, "that unless you propose to honour us with your company to Second Westings, we had better set you ash.o.r.e hereabouts, that you may stretch your legs in the direction of Gault House?"

"Thank you!" said Robert, stiffly, his heart bursting with humiliation and the longing to strangle his huge, supercilious antagonist. But Barbara interrupted.

"I'm not going back to Second Westings!" she declared obstinately, trying hard to set her full red lips together in the resolute way that Robert's had. "I will never go back to live with Aunt Hitty. I'll drown myself first. I'm going to Uncle Bob, at Stratford."

The threat, once so effective, seemed now to have lost its potency. No one appeared impressed but Robert,--and perhaps the stranger-man who owned the boat.

"My dear child," said Doctor John, eying her indulgently, "among the more or less serious obstacles to your plan is one of which I believe that even you will see the magnitude. Mr. Glenowen is no longer at Stratford."

"Uncle Bob not at Stratford?" wailed Barbara, overwhelmed, subjugated in an instant. Robert started aghast.

Doctor John paused dramatically, while the full effect of the news worked upon his victims in the canoe. Then he said, coolly:

"Mr. Glenowen is just now at Hartford, or has lately left that town.

Mistress Ladd had a letter from him to-day, saying he expected to arrive at Second Westings not later than the end of next week, I think, moreover, that I saw a packet on the mantel-shelf addressed to Mistress Barbara Ladd!"

With one bound Barbara's heart pa.s.sed from despair to ecstasy.

Everything else was forgotten. She was as eager now to get back to Second Westings as she had been to escape from it. All she knew or cared for was that Uncle Bob would be there. He would make everything right. Her face was all radiance, as it turned to Doctor John, then to Doctor Jim, then to Robert,--who eyed her gloomily, feeling himself now cast out into the cold. But in her joy Barbara did not forget him after all.

"Just think, Robert," she cried, "Uncle Bob so near, and we would have missed him if Doctor John and Doctor Jim, the dears, had not come and caught us. They are always _angels_ to me, you know. Now we will put you ash.o.r.e right here. And you must be sure to come over to Second Westings and see me,--won't you?--while Uncle Bob is there. Come next week."

"I thank you for the gracious invitation," answered the boy, bowing a little stiffly. "But I think I had better wait for Mr. Glenowen's permission, as these gentlemen are not likely to present me to him in a very favourable light."

"Don't be silly and disagreeable, Robert," said Barbara, impatiently.

"Uncle Bob will think of you just as I do. We always agree about people. Now you must hurry!"

"I think, however," persisted Robert, "I ought to wait for Mr.

Glenowen's invitation."